Lovely Lady
by Swing Girl At Heart
Summary: Running from a horrific incident at McKinley, Quinn disappears into New York as the police try to hunt her down.  Expect the Unexpected.
1. Nobody From Nowhere

****A/N: So, this is part of the Expect The Unexpected series I'm working on, which is, frankly, exactly what it sounds like. As part of my everlasting quest to defy any and all possible cliches, something completely unfathomable occurs with one member of the Glee club in each fic of the series. The goal? To have each character put so far out of their league that they should be OUT of character, but still remain IN character. This is installment number fourteen, but none of them are connected plot-wise, so there aren't any prequels you have to read for any of them. Some will be tragic, some scary, some mysterious, some humorous. Enough jabber - please enjoy!****

* * *

><p><em>Lovely Lady<em>

In every movie Quinn had ever seen about New York, Central Park was shown as a romantic place for a walk or a good place to have a picnic with the kids and the dog. In truth, the Park - or at least this part of it - was littered with trash and empty. She'd always thought that this hour of the night was generally when the druggies and prostitutes would emerge and go about their nocturnal business, but instead there was absolutely nobody in sight, and it was a relief to be alone, even if she was sleeping on a park bench.

Shivering and pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders, Quinn rested her head on her arm and closed her eyes, willing her body to forget the chilly air so she could fall asleep. But still her mind raced and so long as she was thinking, she couldn't sleep. At the forefront of her mind was a wish that she could be back at home in Ohio, with her mom, her friends, her school. But the last few weeks had changed all that - had changed _her_ - and it felt like a lifetime ago that she'd run out of town. She'd needed a place to disappear, so she made her way to New York, where the crime level was through the roof and the police would have a lot more to worry about than some runaway girl from a Midwestern cow town.

Her thoughts were disrupted by a gruff voice. "Hey, girl, whatch'you doin' all the way out here?"

She opened her eyes to see a stocky man in a trucker coat and a Yankees baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes staring down at her from a few feet away. He was flanked by a second man, a blond who twitched every couple of seconds and looked like a drug addict. Quinn sat up calmly, bracing her hands on the park bench, crossing her ankles, and watching them evenly.

"Can I help you?"

The Yankee grinned, looking her up and down. "You're kinda sexy," he drawled, his eyes glinting slightly in the dim light from the walkway lamps.

Quinn chuckled lowly. "Does that line really work on New York girls?"

"Ohhhh, so you're a tourist, huh?" he asked conversationally, taking a step towards her.

She smiled coldly. "Don't sit next to me."

Yankee stopped where he was and raised his hands slightly. "Hey, I didn't wanna offend you or nothing."

"Sure."

"So where're you from?" Yankee asked, glancing at her half-exposed legs.

"Nowhere."

"What's your name?"

"Nobody."

Yankee grinned and nudged the Blond. "I love this girl. Nobody from Nowhere." He turned back to Quinn. "Can we buy you a cup a' coffee?"

The cold smile reappeared.

"...Is that a no?"

"I don't know if you noticed, but I was trying to sleep."

Yankee glanced at Blond with a smirk. "Well, we can't let a girl pretty as you sleep on a bench in the middle of Central Park. So, how bout you come with us? We know a comfier spot."

Quinn laughed. "You really think I'm going to go with two strange men I met in the middle of the night in Central Park? I might be blonde, but I'm not dumb."

"Aw, come on, sweetie, we were just trying to be nice."

"Really."

Yankee shifted. "You know what, Al?" he said a moment later, the grin spreading across his face again. "I think that Little Miss Nobody here should learn a thing or two about bein' polite."

Blond grinned as well, displayed a mouth of teeth the same color as his hair. His knuckles cracked.

Yankee turned back to Quinn, stepping forward and looming over her. "C'mon, Nobody. What'd'you say? Wanna give us a little private peep show?"

Quinn leaned back against the bench, calmly folding her hands in her lap. "Oh, you really wouldn't like what I'd give you."

"Wouldn't be too sure 'bout that," Yankee said, glancing not-so-subtly at her chest. "C'mon, baby."

Quinn laughed through her nose and shook her head. "You really don't want to come any closer."

He took another step forward, Blond circling around to the side, looking just as eager. "Yeah? And why's that?"

"Because I'll scream." Quinn tilted her head, still wearing a bright but empty smile.

Yankee's eyes lit up. "What if we like it when girls scream?"

"You wouldn't like mine."

At that moment, Blond, who had been circling around her as she and Yankee talked, grabbed her arms from behind, his fingers grasping her so tightly that they were sure to bruise. Quinn, however, had given up on being afraid, and this was no exception. She remained still as Yankee bent over in front of her, his breath blowing in her face, and she didn't flinch or even feel her heart skip when he said lowly, "I'm going to stuff my dick down your throat, and you're gonna like it."

He stood up and reached down to unzip his fly, and Blond's grip on Quinn's arms tightened. Quinn met Yankee's eyes with an unshaken glare. "So I guess this is the part where I scream."

"Well, there's no one around to hear it but us," Yankee said, gesturing around the empty walkway for emphasis.

Quinn's smile stretched. "I'm counting on it."

A minute later, she was striding along the walkway alone, and the next morning, a woman who was out early to jog before work stumbled upon the two corpses that Quinn had left behind.

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><p><strong>AN: This installment is LONG overdue. What'd you think? Worth a review?**


	2. Blood And Hunger

_Lovely Lady_

Detective Ria Mendez was a short, stocky woman with harsh Honduran features and a penchant for grey suits when she was on the job. She'd been an officer of the law since she was twenty-five, and she'd worked for the NYPD since she was thirty. Now, she was forty-two and she'd seen everything.

Well. Almost everything.

"Oh, what the fuck?" she said unhappily as she approached the crowded Central Park crime scene on the morning of October twenty-third. There were NYPD, Forensics, Coroners, and even a few EMTs (the only reason they were there was because it was standard response to a 911 call).

"Jogger found them around four-thirty A.M.," stated her partner, Wendell Parkman. He was a few years younger than her, with prematurely grey hair and more than a few freckles. "Forensics say they've never seen anything like it."

"What's the time of death?" she asked, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves as she knelt next to the body that was lying in the middle of the walkway. The other corpse was on the grass behind the bench.

"Coroner put it somewhere between midnight and one A.M. Nine hours ago."

Mendez studied the corpse's blood-covered face. There were dried tracks of blood coming out of every orifice on his head - ears, nostrils, mouth, even his tear ducts - and collecting on the pavement beneath his head. "We get an ID?"

"No, both of them were clean. The needle scars on their arms suggest that they didn't have much use for IDs, though."

Mendez pushed the dead man's jacket sleeve up, and sure enough there were several black track marks in the crook of his elbow. "So what's Forensics thinking on the cause of death?"

"No ideas so far."

Mendez glared over her shoulder at him. "_None_?"

Wendell shrugged. "They thought it was some kind of radioactive... thing, but neither body is emitting radiation, so we're back to square one."

"Any fingerprints? DNA? _Any_thing?"

He shrugged again and shook his head. Mendez huffed and turned her attention back to the corpse. She frowned, glancing back and forth between the two corpses.

"What are you thinking?" asked Wendell, kneeling beside her.

"Their legs are only slightly bent, their heads are to the side, their arms are askew..."

"Uh... yeah. That's generally what someone looks like when they're dead. They don't stand up, you know."

She gave him a look. "They each fell over backwards," she said firmly.

"...So?"

"Okay, seriously, those donuts you love so much are clouding your vision with trans fat," she snapped.

Wendell shrugged with an apologetic grin. "What can I say? I'm a cop."

"Look at the bodies - they each fell _away_ from each other. Which means, there was probably something in the middle that was pushing them in that direction."

"You mean like a bomb?"

Mendez glanced back at the corpse's bloody face. "Well, considering that all the damage was internal, I'd say it was a pretty sophisticated bomb, if it was even a bomb at all. But yeah, an explosion of some kind."

"A sonic boom."

Mendez and Wendell hadn't noticed the young forensics specialist who'd been squatting on the other side of the body, taking the corpse's fingerprints. "A sonic boom?" Wendell echoed.

The guy seemed surprised that they'd heard him and hesitated. "Well...no."

Mendez rose her eyebrows. "If it wasn't a sonic boom, then why'd you say it?" He opened his mouth to answer, but she flapped a dismissive hand and stood up, pulling off her gloves and speaking to Wendell. "Let's get these guys shipped off to the morgue, we need autopsies and full reports ASAP."

"Um, excuse me - Ma'am? Officer?"

"Look, kid, we've got work to do-"

"I know, but this... I think I can explain it." The specialist stepped over the corpse's legs.

Mendez crossed her arms. "You have one minute."

He took a breath and nodded. "Yeah, um, the - the bleeding was pretty obviously internal, but it seems to have taken place exclusively in the brain-"

"Forty-five seconds."

"Well, I think it was from a sound explosion."

Mendez sighed. "Like a sonic boom? Kiddo, this is starting to get repetetive."

"Uh, yes and no. If it had been a sonic boom, a lot more people would've heard it and there'd probably be debris from the trees around here. But, you know how an opera singer with the right training can shatter a wine glass with her voice?"

Mendez frowned pensively, processing this new information. "So... you're saying that in this case, these guys' brains were the wine glasses?"

The specialist nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! Yeah, exactly! A short-range, high-frequency sound."

Wendell shook his head in confusion. "Wait, are you saying that these guys were killed by a person? An _opera singer_?"

"What? No, it's a metaphor-"

"Actually," Mendez cut in, stepping back towards the body. "I think we _are_ looking for a person. Check it out." She pulled her gloves back on and pulled the corpse's shirt up a little ways.

"His fly's undone? Why does that mean we're looking for a person?" Wendell asked, completely bewildered by this point.

Mendez clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Kiddo, think you can guess my theory?"

The specialist looked startled that she was addressing him again, but he knelt and took a look. "Both his zipper _and _his button are undone, which means he undid them on purpose, which means he was either going to take a leak in the middle of the walkway, or... Whoa. It was self-defense!"

Wendell's considerably-sized eyebrows snapped together. "Wait, wait, wait... what am I missing here? Can someone fill me in?"

"They weren't standing on either side of a bomb, they were standing on either side of a _person_!" the specialist exclaimed.

Mendez nodded, clapping the kid on the shoulder and standing up, pulling off her gloves again. "Most likely a young woman. They found her sitting on the bench, were going to assault her, but she got them before they got her."

"Wait, are we actually looking for an opera singer?" Wendell asked.

Mendez shrugged. "Probably. Can you think of anyone else who could make that kind of sound?" She turned to the young specialist. "What's your name, kiddo?"

"Uh, Kyle."

"You majored in physics?"

"Yeah?"

"Who's your supervisor?"

"...McElhinny."

Mendez nodded. "Find McElhinny, have him get someone to search the bench for DNA samples, then hand him your resignation and meet us back at the station. You're working with us now."

* * *

><p>Quinn sat on the grimy floor of a subway station, devouring a large sandwich and trying to stay inconspicuous. One thing she'd learned very quickly since leaving Ohio: invisibility was a blessing. The crowds moving around the platform paid her no mind, and she was grateful for it. She'd snatched the sandwich from a table at Subway while the man who'd paid for it went to the bathroom and disappeared before the management had a chance to see her. Since she'd gone on the run, she'd felt hungry a lot - it wasn't a feeling she was used to, having been born with the silver spoon in her mouth and all, but she was slowly adjusting to it.<p>

The first time she'd gone a day without eating, she'd felt dizzy and the hollow gnawing at the inside of her abdomen had made it hard to think. Six and a half hours after it had started to actually _hurt_, she'd gone into a bakery, walked right up to the counter, and grabbed an entire plate of cinnamon rolls off the display without even checking to make sure no one was looking. The manager had grabbed her wrist, she'd yelped in surprise, and every window and glass surface had shattered at the sound, providing the perfect diversion for her to take her cinnamon rolls and escape. She'd almost fainted from the effort of running three blocks on a stomach that had been empty for thirty-six hours, and the corners of her vision were starting to darken when she finally dove into an alleyway and eaten all six rolls hiding behind a dumpster. When the pounding in every part of her body had finally subsided, she'd realized how colossally reckless the action had been, and made herself promise to be as subtle as possible from then on.

She'd learned a lot in the past few weeks.

She was still only seventeen, so she couldn't get a job, and she didn't have any forms of ID that would allow her to find a place to live, so it seemed she was destined to live on the streets. And either way, finding a job and a place to live would mean leaving a trail, and that was something she couldn't afford to do.


	3. Bread Crumbs

_Lovely Lady_

The alleyways in the richer sections of Manhattan were occasionally empty and always chock-full of discarded beer bottles, which made them the perfect place for Quinn to practice. She collected bottles from around the alley and pulled a few more out of the dumpster at the opening onto the street, and lined them from one brick wall to the other. Then, casting a glance over her shoulder just to make sure that there weren't any other homeless people scouting out the alley, she sat cross-legged against the wall, right at the start of her beer-bottle line. She'd tried to perform this exercise every day or so since she'd arrived in New York, partly to have something to do and partly because she knew that it was important to know how to control her ability, if one could call it that. She had to be able to reign it in or unleash it depending on her situation, and, more importantly, _she_ had to be the one to decide whether or not to do either. She couldn't let her reflexes control it, otherwise she'd be on the run for a much longer period of time.

Taking a breath to steady herself, Quinn focused her energy and opened her mouth, letting out a single high note that hung in the air for a moment. The two bottles closest to her trembled slightly, but nothing significant happened. As far as she could tell at this point, the louder the volume, the wider the range, and the higher the pitch, the more damage it caused. She'd discovered that, generally speaking, if it was beyond the range of human hearing, it was a sound that had the potential to be dangerous. Unfortunately for her, she'd found out too late that her vocal chords could apparently emit two different sounds at the same time - both a frequency that was audible, and a frequency that was deadly. These practice sessions were an attempt at separating the two of them.

She concentrated again and let out a slightly higher and louder note, watching with a mix of satisfaction and amazement as a small spiderweb of cracks began to spread across the closest beer bottle. She ended the note and took a breath before the bottle had a chance to fall apart completely. Adjusting her position to make herself a little more comfortable, she started another, higher note and began to gradually increase the volume.

The first bottle shattered, then the second one, and as Quinn concentrated on slowly expanding the range, the bottles rapidly exploded one after the other. She brushed a few shards off her legs as she stood up, eyeing the glass carnage strewn across the pavement before setting out to find more bottles.

Practice made perfect.

* * *

><p>Mendez was frustrated, to say the least. Wendell had gone home for the night, but she'd been in the office for almost forty-eight hours straight, and still, their only lead was that they were <em>probably<em> looking for a person, who was _probably _female and _probably _attractive. She didn't like probablies - more often than not, probablies led to unlikelies, and from there moved on to impossibles. Rubbing her eyes in exhaustion, she downed the rest of her coffee, then grimaced when she realized it was cold and spat it back into her mug.

There was a knock on her office door and Kyle poked his head in.

"Kyle, where the fuck is the coffee I asked you to get me?"

Kyle blinked, pushing his black bangs out of his eyes. "Uh, you're holding it. I gave it to you an hour ago."

Mendez stared at him for a second.

"But I-I can get you more, they just made a fresh pot in the lounge-"

She flapped her hand. "Leave it. What is it?"

"Well... I think we might have a lead."

Immediately, Mendez sat upright in her chair. "Go on."

Kyle came around to her side of the desk and commandeered her laptop (much to her annoyance, but she said nothing), pulling up Google and typing "_Lima Ohio school murders_" into the search bar. "I was searching around New York state for incidents like this, and there was nothing, but then I broadened the search to the Northeast, and then the whole country, and this was the only similar circumstance that came up. It happened just a few weeks ago." He clicked on the first article, which was from a local newspaper simply called the _Lima Post_, and stood back so that Mendez could read the headline.

_**-UNSOLVED BLOODBATH LEAVES THIRTEEN DEAD IN HIGH SCHOOL MYSTERY SLAUGHTER-**_

"Thirteen people?" Mendez echoed. "That doesn't sound like our guy."

"Well, we haven't seen enough of these to establish an M.O. and the cause of death is exactly the same," Kyle said, scratching his head. "The Lima PD even came to the same radiation conclusion as we did before ruling it out when none of the bodies were radioactive."

"So what's the connection between New York and a tiny cow town in Ohio that's named after a bean?"

Kyle grinned. "Look at the list of victims."

Mendez squinted at the computer screen. The names were listed alphabetically.

_Confirmed Dead: Arthur Abrams, Blaine Anderson, Rachel Berry, Michael Chang, Tina Cohen-Chang, Finn Hudson, Kurt Hummel, Mercedes Jones, Santana Lopez, Brittany Pierce, Noah Puckerman, William Schuester (faculty), and Lauren Zizes._

She was about to ask what was so special about the list when she noticed that below it, accompanied by a school yearbook picture, was a fourteenth name.

_Missing: Lucy Fabray._

Mendez studied the picture of a sweet-looking blonde girl in a pastel green cardigan. "There's our young, attractive woman." She smiled and clapped Kyle on the shoulder. "Good work, kiddo. You should consider pursuing a career in detective work."

"It gets better," he said. "All the victims from the Lima high school were part of the school show choir - the corpses were all found in their music classroom."

Mendez's eyes lit up. "So we _are _looking for someone who can sing." She grinned and elbowed Kyle roughly in the ribs. "Am I good at my job or what?" She stood up and stretched. "Okay, I want you to run another search for this Lucy Fabray person, and then call the high school and see if you can get ahold of somebody."

"Already did. I mean, the first part. Lucy Fabray was spotted once in Pennsylvania, hitchhiking along the I-80 east."

"...Which would bring her almost straight to New York. Kyle, you are going to be my new partner when Wendell finally gets shot. Call the high school and let me know when you get in contact with someone."

Kyle grinned. "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later, Kyle and Mendez were leaning over her office phone and waiting for the ringing tone to end. When it did, the voice that answered was a snappish, "<em>Yeah, what?<em>"

Kyle frowned. "Uh, is this the main office of McKinley High School?"

_"No, I had all of Principal Figgins' phones rewired so that any calls would go to me first. Makes him much easier to monitor. Who are you?"_

Mendez took over then, speaking with a clear authorative tone. "Ma'am, I'm Detective Ria Mendez and I'm with my associate, Kyle Jamison. We're with the NYPD and we'd like to speak with the principal about the murders that occurred on your school's grounds on the afternoon of September thirtieth."

"_The Principal's not here right now, it's eight in the evening and he's due for his chest waxing. And either way, he's incompetent. You'll have to talk to me._"

Mendez shook her head. "Look, ma'am, we'd just like to speak to the Principal for the time being, thank you. Could you possibly give us his home phone number?"

"_Look, Detective - I used to work for the FBI, and I can tell you without any fear of uncertainty that Figgins will be useless to you as a source. And if the reason you're calling is that there's been a similar death in New York, I can also tell you that since the matter has now crossed state lines, it's now a concern for the federal police and not your local precinct._"

Mendez pursed her lips in irritation. "We're aware of that, ma'am, but right now we're just helping to gather information. Could you please give us Mr. Figgins' phone number?" she requested coldly.

The woman on the other end recited the number and Kyle scribbled it down.

"Thank you very much," Mendez replied, keeping her tone professional. "And, just in case this guy turns out to be as useless as you say, could you give us your name and contact information so we can ask a few questions?"

"_The name is Sue Sylvester, and you can ask those questions right now. I don't give out my home phone number, otherwise the Russians will track it._"

Mendez rolled her eyes, almost fed up with this woman's... mannerisms, if she could call it that, though it seemed to be a gross understatement. She'd hate to think of how quickly she'd lose her temper if she ever met this Sue Sylvester face-to-face. "All right, then," she said, gesturing to Kyle to take notes. "First off, how were the bodies discovered?"

"_The only surviving member of the club ran out of the room screaming_."

"So Lucy didn't disappear right away?"

"_Who?_"

"Lucy Fabray, the girl who went missing."

"_Oh, you mean Q._"

"I beg your pardon?"

"_Lucy was her given name, but she went by her middle name, Quinn._"

Kyle scratched that onto the top of the page above his notes and circled it.

"And what was your relation to the victims?"

"_Will Schuester and his greasy hairpiece were colleagues of mine, I'm sorry to say. The kids he taught in that club were the bottom rungs of the school social ladder._"

"So you're a faculty member?"

"_I'm an internationally-ranked cheerleading coach, former FBI agent and Navy Seal, not to mention the fact that I have my own segment on WOHN._"

Mendez shook her head in bewilderment. "We'll keep that in mind, but right now we're just looking for info relating to the murders. Did you see the bodies yourself?"

"_Yes, I was the only one brave enough to go into the auditorium once Quinn had come out. Even though every single one of the victims was a sworn enemy of mine, they didn't deserve what they got._"

"Could you be more specific?"

As the Sylvester woman described what she'd seen in the auditorium, Mendez nodded, not surprised that it was lining up perfectly with how the corpses in Central Park had been found. Eyes open with burst blood vessels turning the whites red, blood leaking out of the tear ducts, ears, nose, and mouth, plus bruises on the cheeks, temples, and neck where the arteries had ripped open beneath the skin.

"_So how close are you to catching this guy? This murderer-slash-kidnapper?_"

Mendez frowned. "There are no charges for kidnapping, ma'am."

"_...But Quinn Fabray is _missing_. I fail to see how that doesn't warrant a kidnapping charge._"

"Ms. Sylvester... we think that Quinn Fabray is the killer."

There was a long pause, and then a firm, "_That's impossible_."

"Ma'am, we-"

"_Quinn Fabray was the captain of my cheer squad for _years_, Agent Whats-your-name. I made sure she was tough enough to withstand at least sixty hours of torture, just like I did with all the girls on my squad, and but she would never hurt anyone unless the situation strictly demanded it. Not to mention the fact that training children to kill is somewhat illegal in this part of the country, so she never received that part of her education._"

Kyle's jaw had dropped a long time ago as he stared at the phone's speaker, wondering if this woman was for real or just a serious practical joker. "Ma'am, at the moment Quinn Fabray is only a suspect. She's not on trial and the evidence is not conclusive," Mendez was saying. "We'll call you if we need any more information. Thank you." Mendez quickly hung up before the eccentric woman could try to argue.

Kyle shook his head in an attempt to clear it. "That was... weird."

Mendez pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm going home for the night. I need sleep. I'll see you in the morning."


	4. Mirror, Mirror

_Lovely Lady_

The next morning, Mendez and Wendell paid a visit to the city morgue, with Kyle tagging along behind. The coroner showed them to the crypt, a white-tiled room with large metal drawers set into the wall, and pulled out two of them, exposing the two corpses from Central Park with stitches forming a massive Y over their chests and circles around the crown of their skulls.

"Were you able to ID either of them?" Wendell asked.

The coroner nodded and pulled the cadaver files out of a cabinet at the back of the room. "Yeah, we ran their fingerprints through the NYPD database – Alan Kowalski and Peter Fendish. Both heroin junkies and repeat offenders. Kowalski was an actual drug dealer outside of his own habit, and Fendish did a few years in jail for armed robbery."

"Either of them sex offenders?"

"Kowalski was suspected of rape a couple years back, but nothing was concluded."

Mendez glared down distastefully at the bluish face of Kowalski. "Did you find anything out of the ordinary? You know, physically?"

The coroner gave her a look. "Lady, these are the most unusual cadavers I've ever seen."

"Please, Doctor, we're all just dying of suspense here," Mendez drawled (her coffee machine had broken that morning and so she was much crankier than usual).

"Okay, look." He pulled out a small pile of photographs from Fendish's file and gave them to her. "The inside of the body is not supposed to look like that. Anything that wasn't muscle or bone just… opened up. Their hearts were working just fine, but _every single one_ of their veins seemed to disintegrate, letting all of their blood out at once. Unless you hit a major artery, internal bleeding can take _hours_ to kill you. But this? These guys died in an _instant_."

Mendez studied the photos, with Wendell and Kyle peering over her shoulders (an easy task considering the fact that she was a head shorter than Kyle and two heads shorter than Wendell). What she saw was absolutely disgusting – a porridge of entrails that looked like they'd melted in the microwave.

"That's got to be the grossest thing I've ever seen," said Kyle. "And that's coming from someone who once ate his own barf on a dare."

Mendez, Wendell, and the coroner all turned their heads to stare at him, looking even more disgusted than before.

Kyle shifted. "Um… m-my sister had cruel ideas when it came to dares…"

Mendez shook her head, trying to purge the mental image from her brain. "Okay, so do you have any clue as to what caused it?"

He sighed. "If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it was radiation, but that kind of thing leaves a burning trail, and there's no trace of it. This was _livor mortis_ while they were alive; it doesn't make sense. You come up with anything?"

"Nothing definite, but Kyle here is putting his money on an opera singer," said Wendell.

The coroner looked at Kyle, surprised. "Internal damage as a result of high-frequency sound waves? I could buy that if it was exclusively in the brain, but whatever it was affected the whole body. This is bordering on science fiction."

"Well, if the problem is out of science fiction, then chances are that so is the solution," Kyle replied.

The coroner grinned. "Comic geek, huh?"

Kyle shrugged. "I dabble."

"Kyle, please tell me that your working theory isn't Magneto in the parlor room with the candlestick," snapped Mendez.

"Uh, well, I'm actually more of a DC Comics guy, but—"

"Right, well, as _fascinating_ as your nerd-ranting is," she cut in pointedly, "we've got work to do. Let's head back to the station. Doc, I want those autopsy reports faxed over to the precinct ASAP."

* * *

><p>Two hours later, they were still poring over the autopsy reports from Central Park and the reports from the Lima high school, which Kyle had had faxed over early that morning.<p>

"Something's not right here," Wendell said. "These aren't lining up."

Mendez looked up with a frown. "What do you mean?"

"Look at these." Wendell slid a few photographs across the desk. Each picture was of one of the Ohio corpses with their chest cavities opened up, the ribs pulled back and the major organs exposed. Mendez studied the innards of a young Asian male. "There's nothing wrong with them," she said.

"Exactly." Wendell handed her the photograph of the same cut in Kowalski's torso. "Why are the kids from Ohio intact inside, when the guys from Central Park were turned into bags of meat soup?"

"That…is a really good question," Mendez said. "Kyle, get us some more coffee, would you?"

Kyle nodded and dropped his notepad on the arm of his chair, shutting the door to their office behind him as he headed for the officers' lounge. There were only two other people in the lounge, both sergeants who were sitting at the coffee table chatting. As Kyle poured the first mug, he overhead the sergeants' conversation.

"—swear to god, it was the weirdest coincidence I've ever seen," the elder sergeant was saying. "Two people at the _exact_ same time, in the middle of the subway rush hour, just… boom! Dropped dead!"

"Jesus," said the other. "What'd the coroner say?"

"Well, that's what makes it weird – they died of completely different causes. The guy had a pacemaker that malfunctioned for some reason, and the woman had a brain aneurysm."

"Wait, wait," Kyle interrupted, frowning as he turned around from the coffee machine. "Where was this?"

"The subway platform at Broadway and 7th. Why?"

"Were there any stressors? You know, a fight brewing or something?"

The sergeant looked at Kyle askance. "How'd you know that?"

Kyle didn't answer, instead his eyebrows pulled further together. "The fight wasn't instigated by a blonde girl, was it?"

The sergeant's eyes widened. "Okay, seriously, what's going on?"

But Kyle was already speed-walking down the corridor.

Wendell and Mendez both jumped when Kyle burst back into the office, and Mendez immediately scowled when she saw that he was carrying no coffee.

"Dammit, Kyle, where's the—"

"Coffee, I know!" he cut her off. "I've got something better."

* * *

><p>Quinn's hands gripped the sides of the public bathroom sink as she breathed deeply through her nostrils, trying to calm her nerves, which felt like they were crackling with electricity. What she'd done on the subway platform had been a complete accident – she'd been more startled than anyone when the ticket officer and the woman passing behind her had collapsed at the same time, and there was no way that anyone could trace the deaths to her, but she <em>knew <em>that it was her fault. She'd picked a subway pass card out of a woman's purse (really, the woman had been asking for it, leaving her purse unzipped like that), and she'd been heading for the turnstiles when the man from the ticket booth, who had seen her steal the card, came out and tried to take it back from her. She hadn't meant to hurt him, but she'd just been so _frustrated_ that she'd let out an exasperated growl, and in the next second the officer was on the ground along with the innocent woman who had been on her way to work.

She didn't know why only those two people had died and no one else, but she knew one thing: she had to _stop_. She couldn't keep killing people by mistake. The two men in Central Park were the only ones that had been completely intentional, and that was the one time when her unusual voice box seemed to have done her some good.

Leaning her head down and feeling tears work into her eyes, Quinn tried to suck in a breath, but it hurt her ribs. She was stiff from spending every night in the October chill and spending every day walking all over the city. She hated having to steal to eat. She hated having to substitute rinsing her armpits in a public bathroom for a real hot shower. She hated being entirely alone, having no one she could even speak to in passing without the fear of them collapsing with blood streaming out of their ears.

"A-are you okay?"

Quinn flinched and quickly wiped her face on the sleeve of her jacket. A scrawny, shaggy-haired teenage boy was standing in the doorway, staring at her with his head cocked to the side like a puppy. "What are you doing in here?" she sniffed quietly, keeping her voice low as a precaution. "This is the girls' room."

"…Actually, it's the boys'."

Quinn frowned and glanced over her shoulder, noticing the line of urinals for the first time. She must have been too preoccupied to notice the sign outside. "…Oh."

"So… are you okay?" the boy asked again. "Do you want me to call someone?"

Quinn shook her head, turning back to the sink and rinsing her hands, wiping some water onto her face.

The boy bit his lip. "…Is there anyone to call?"

"Why do you care?"

He sighed. "Okay, confession… I followed you."

Her first instinct was to yell "_WHAT?_", but she managed to hold herself and her voice in check. "Why?" she asked calmly instead.

"I…I saw what happened on Broadway and 7th," he said.

Quinn's eyes immediately widened in fury and she marched up to him, grabbing him by his lapels and snarling under her breath. "What the _hell_ do you want with me? Huh?"

He threw his hands up. "No, no, it's okay! I promise! I want to offer you a job!"

Quinn paused, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Look, I don't know how you did it, but _you_ made those people keel over."

She scoffed and let go of him, crossing her arms. "You can't prove anything."

"Well… it all happened when you got mad, it all happened at the same time, and then you took one look at them and ran for your life."

Huffing through her nose, she rolled her eyes and planted her hands on her hips. "I stole a pass card," she said simply. "I didn't want to get caught."

"Right. And the ticket booth window just _happened_ to completely smash itself to pieces at the _exact_ same second when those two people collapsed."

"…Maybe."

"Look, I'm not gonna turn you in. I need your help."

"What are you _talking _about? You don't even know me."

The boy promptly stuck out his hand. "I'm Peter."

Quinn sighed, then reluctantly shook it. "I'm Tina," she said, giving him the first name that came to mind.

He smiled. "So. Now that we know each other, will you help me?"

"You don't have _any_ proof that that was me!"

"Sounds more like you're trying not to get caught than telling the truth," Peter shrugged, his hands in his jean pockets. "Like I said, I'm not interested in turning you in. Whatever you've done in the past, I don't care. If you're on the Ten Most Wanted List, I don't care."

"Then what do you want?"

He sighed. "My brother owes some money to the wrong people, but our family can't afford it. He and his friends are planning on robbing a bank to pay it off."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"I want you to go with them and make sure it goes off without a hitch. I don't want my brother shot. I want him to do this one job, and then fly straight the rest of his life."

"Hate to sound redundant, but what does it have to do with me?"

"You can provide diversions and you can take out guards that might shoot at them," Peter said.

Quinn scoffed. "I think you've got the wrong person," she said, moving towards the door.

Peter gently grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her back. "_Please_, Tina."

Her nostrils flared. "Don't. Touch. Me."

"You'll get a fair share of the money."

"I don't _want_ it!" she cried, shoving him roughly away. "_Leave me alone!_"

Peter hissed in pain and squeezed his eyes shut, and then there was a crash and tinkling glass. Quinn froze, and Peter opened his eyes, glancing behind her. He smiled.

"You still want to claim that that wasn't you?"

Quinn pinched the bridge of her nose. "The mirror's broken, isn't it?"

Peter nodded, still grinning. She wanted to punch him. "Come on," he said. "You'll get a bed of your own. And full shower access."

The mention of a shower immediately made her open her eyes.

"Please?" Peter said again.

She sighed. "Fine. But only for the shower."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Thanks to SpookyKat for the help!**


	5. Chain Links

_Lovely Lady_

Peter's apartment was one of the filthiest Quinn had ever seen. Every piece of furniture had either clothes or papers or some other kind of debris strewn over it, dishes were piled high in the sink, and it looked like it hadn't been swept or vacuumed in at least a year.

"Doesn't your mom clean?" Quinn remarked offhandedly as she edged her way through the door behind Peter, who immediately tossed his backpack onto the floor in the tiny kitchen area off the living room.

"Uh, no, my mom died when I was three or so," he answered, sounding completely and oddly nonchalant.

Quinn frowned. 'Or so'? Didn't he know? "I'm sorry," she said. "What about your dad?"

Peter smiled, peering into the fridge. "He went AWOL a long time ago. It's just Elliot and me, and between jobs and schoolwork, we don't exactly have time for anything else." He stood up and took a gulp straight out of the milk carton he was holding. "Speaking of schoolwork, aren't you a little young to be on the streets by yourself?"

Quinn glared at him.

He shrugged and put the milk back into the fridge. "Yeah, you're right. None of my business. Okay, so, you can sleep on the pull-out couch," he said, relocating to the living room. He started to move the clutter off the couch, tossing it onto the cheap plastic dining table, and pulling the seat cushions out. In less than a minute, there was a full queen-sized, thin-mattressed creaky bed filling the open space in the middle of the room. Peter stood back and scratched his head. "It's not that great, I know, but it's better than a doorway somewhere in the Bronx."

Quinn forced a smile. "It's great."

Peter glanced at the clock, which was just reaching five-thirty P.M. A siren blared on the street below the building and then faded off into the distance. "Well, I have a shift at six, so I gotta get going."

Quinn quirked a thin eyebrow. "You're not nervous about leaving a homeless person alone in your apartment?"

Peter shrugged again, and the gesture was quickly becoming a signature. "We don't really have anything worth stealing, and even if your clothes are dirty, they're too nice to have been scrounged. I don't think you'll do any harm. I'll be back around midnight."

* * *

><p>As Mendez downed the last of her eighteenth cup of coffee that day, she stared at the screen of her laptop, which was showing a grainy, halting, greenish image from a security camera. Kyle had called up the security administrator for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and gotten them to send over the camera tapes from the platform at Broadway and 7th. The subjects of her attention were a chubby black man in the uniform of a ticket collector and a skinny blonde girl with a ponytail, a denim jacket and khaki pants that only reached to just below her knees – way too short for Manhattan in October. Mendez watched the girl rush off to the turnstiles and disappear off-camera, then rewound the footage and watched it again.<p>

A squat little toad of a woman came through the turnstiles from the platform just as the blonde girl appeared from the left of the camera, passing close by the woman and darting her hand into her purse. Mendez couldn't tell what the girl had stolen, but she could assume that it was a MetroCard. As the girl headed towards the platform, the man from the ticket booth emerged from behind the window and called after her, pulling her back and angrily holding out his hand, obviously demanding that she give him whatever it was she stole. Though there was no sound, Mendez could tell by the jerking motions of the girl's defensive gestures that she was getting frustrated very quickly. The tiny shadow of her mouth opened, and suddenly the ticket collector staggered and fell, clutching at his chest. At the same instant, another woman who had been striding behind the blonde girl abruptly put a hand to her head as she collapsed on the dirty station floor.

The blonde girl flinched, a hand over her mouth. She was obviously startled just as much as, if not more than, the other people walking to and from the platform just beginning to take notice and gather around the two now-corpses. The girl, panicking now, glanced back and forth between the newly dead man and woman, then spun on her heel and broke into a run, launching herself over the turnstiles and disappearing from view.

Mendez sat back with a frown.

"So… you think it's her?" Kyle piped up from where he was sitting on the other side of the room.

Mendez nodded. "I know it's her. It's just… there's something really weird about this."

Wendell quirked an eyebrow. "No, really?"

She glared at him for a moment. "I meant besides everything weird that's already come up."

He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Well, you'll have to narrow it down a little. The Chief doesn't do hunches and you know it."

Mendez ignored him and resumed her scowl at the laptop screen, which was displaying a paused image of the blonde girl jumping over the turnstiles. "She panicked pretty significantly there, don't you think?" she mused aloud. Neither Kyle nor Wendell responded, deciding to wait for her to finish her thought lest they provoke another snappish retort. A few seconds later, Mendez sat back, scratching at her temple. "I don't think this Quinn Fabray is a murderer."

Wendell lurched forward in his chair, his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline. "What are you _talking_ about? This girl is the only link between two almost identical cases six hundred miles apart!"

Mendez shot him a fierce glare that clearly stated _Shut the fuck up, you moron._ "I know she's the only link," she said smoothly. "And it's completely obvious that she caused these deaths, even if we're not sure exactly how. But I seriously doubt that a seventeen-year-old girl with absolutely no priors would suddenly lose it and kill thirteen people, then run to New York and kill four more. She was a _cheerleader_ – the biggest crime she was guilty of before this whole mess was probably ignoring the people like Kyle."

Kyle coughed.

"It doesn't make sense," Mendez continued. "She's not doing it on purpose."

Wendell shrugged. "Why would that affect our investigation?"

"If she's killing people by mistake, then there's no way to know who her next victims are going to be, and she could end up killing a lot more than thirteen people at once. What if this happens in Times Square? At the Yankee Stadium?"

"She's living on the streets, Ria; I don't think she's going to be going to any baseball games."

"My point is still valid. We need to find her, and we need to find her _fast_. For all we know, she could accidentally kill off the entire population of the Bronx. Or worse, the New York Giants."

* * *

><p>As Quinn stepped out of the steaming shower and wrung out her freshly clean hair, she decided that she was never going to take bathing or hot water for granted again. It wasn't until she had begun to lather shampoo into her scalp that she realized just how badly she smelled – after a week or so, her nose must have automatically desensitized so that she wouldn't vomit. At this point, she hadn't cared that the soaps in Peter's bathroom (all two of them) were men's brands; four weeks without really washing her hair and she probably needed Head And Shoulders.<p>

She breathed in the steam, allowing it to steep in her lungs for a moment before exhaling and wiping the mist off the tiny mirror. She poked at her clothes, which were soaking in a sinkful of soapy warm water, and then drained the sink so that she could rinse them before hanging them up on the towel rod to dry.

A sudden hard banging against the bathroom door caused Quinn to jump, her eyes wide. "Peter, what the hell is taking so long? I've gotta shower before work in the morning," an unfamiliar man's voice demanded from the other side. In the space of about two seconds, Quinn realized that not only was Peter's older brother home, but that Peter hadn't told him that there would be a homeless girl in their apartment.

She froze, completely at a loss. If she didn't respond, then Peter's brother would almost certainly just open the door, and she couldn't lock it without making him suspicious. If she _did_ respond, then there were two possibilities: either he wonders if his little brother has been injecting himself with estrogen for the past three years, or, the far more likely option, he runs to the front closet and grabs a shotgun.

Okay, so this wasn't Ohio – he probably didn't have an actual shotgun. Quinn was still in a bit of a situation, and to make matters worse, she was _naked _except for a towel, which was really _not_ a good first impression on anyone, especially on someone who is probably going to assume that you've broken into their home.

He – Quinn couldn't remember the name that Peter had told her – banged again on the door. "Peter! Seriously, hurry it up already!"

Still, she couldn't bring herself to reply. A moment later, the doorknob turned, and the door swung open. "Please tell me you're not doing what I think you're—"

When he saw a wide-eyed Quinn standing in the middle of his bathroom floor, wearing nothing but a towel, there were several seconds of complete and utter silence, and then he managed only four words:

"What the actual fuck?"


	6. America Runs On Dunkin'

_Lovely Lady_

Quinn shivered, wrapping her arms tighter around her chest. The nights were getting colder, and her hair was still wet from the shower, so the wind traveling over her face and hands felt ten times as chilly. She knew that if she was going to survive the upcoming winter, she had to get thicker clothes. Homeless people died of the cold all the time.

"Tina!"

Quinn looked around at the sound of her fake name, seeing Peter jogging to catch up to her from further back along the sidewalk. He was wearing a shirt and cap that both said in pink bubble letters, _America Runs On Dunkin'_.

"I saw you pass by— What are you doing?" he asked, frowning in confusion.

"Walking," she snapped, turning around to continue doing so. There was a rumble of thunder far overhead.

"Okay…" Peter said patiently, keeping up with her. "Where are you going, then?"

Quinn stopped again. "You know what? It's none of your business."

Peter quirked an eyebrow. "So, is this what you do? You con people into using their showers and then hightail it to Brooklyn?"

"Well, maybe I cleaned you out, too," she spat, walking faster.

"We don't keep money in the apartment." He grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face him. "Tina, I already explained this. I really need your help."

She pressed her lips together, glaring at him with as much animosity she could muster. "You don't know me," she said lowly. "You have _no_ idea what I'm capable of or what I might do to you and that asshole brother of yours."

"Ah. Elliot kicked you out."

"No, actually, I threw myself out before he got the chance to." She turned around to keep walking, but Peter circled around in front of her. Her nostrils flared in aggravation, and spoke in a very low tone. "I am trying really hard right now not to yell," she told him. "You know what'll happen if I do, so don't try me, okay?"

There was another rumble of thunder above their heads, and Peter sighed, glancing up at the clouds covering the night sky. "It's going to rain, and you've got no place to go."

"I can keep myself dry, thanks."

"But you can't keep yourself warm." He stuck his thumbs in his pockets, adjusting his _Dunkin'_ cap over his shaggy hair. "Look, just come and hang out until my shift ends, and then I'll take you back to the apartment and talk to Elliot about it."

Quinn rolled her eyes. "Why should I trust a person who's asking me to _rob a bank_?"

"You probably shouldn't. But I can't talk Elliot out of it, he can't go to jail, and you can't stay on the streets."

"I can take care of myself."

"I never said you couldn't." He held up his hands. "So? What do you say to a hot cup of coffee? Maybe a donut hole?"

Quinn huffed, rolling her eyes. "Fine."

* * *

><p>Mendez knocked sharply on the door to the Chief's office before entering and standing rigidly in front of his desk. "You wanted to see me, sir?"<p>

Police Chief Chuck Morgan pulled off his silver-rimmed glasses and dropped them on top of the stack of paperwork he'd been filling out. He was a startlingly narrow caricature of a creature that probably belonged in Middle Earth. A decidedly unattractive man with cheekbones far too wide for his face and thick black eyebrows that looked completely out of place below his thinning gray hairline, he was bony and surrounded by rumors of a past crack addiction. Mendez didn't particularly like him, but he was a good cop – whether or not he _had_ been a crack addict was still a mystery.

Now, Morgan looked at her levelly with stone-brown eyes and snapped, "You want to tell me why you're still working on a _federal_ case?"

Mendez hesitated. "…I like to see things through to the end," she said after a moment's indecision.

Morgan shook his head, annoyed. "No, no, don't give me that. Listen, Ria," he drawled, speaking purposefully slowly. "You are _not_ a federal agent. You aren't even a _state_ cop. You are a detective—"

"Exactly," she cut in tightly. "It's my job to find evidence and put it together."

"Not on federal cases!" he snapped. "This girl has murdered a total of seventeen people in two different states. This is a concern for the FBI, and the FBI _only_. You're done with it."

Mendez's mouth pursed. "Sir, if I could—"

"You are on a very short leash right now, Ria. This is the second time you've pulled a stunt like this, and what I should really be doing is taking your gun and badge."

"Look, Chief," Mendez started again, a hint of desperation slipping into her voice. She _hated_ begging. "If we give this to the FBI, it won't get the attention it needs, and then it'll end up in their cold case files. They will _never_ find this girl. Government employees are underpaid, overworked, and they _will _miss the critical details."

"_You _are a government employee, Mendez!"

"City government," she corrected. "And I haven't seen any FBI agents snooping around the city so far."

"Because you didn't report it!" Morgan barked. "I had to hear about it from that scrawny weirdo you hired on the spot, which, by the way, was _not_ precinct-approved."

Mendez clenched her jaw. She knew that if she said any more now, she'd be out of a job in seconds.

Morgan sighed and sat back in his chair. "I'm cutting you a break right now, Ria. Don't push me."

She sucked in her cheeks. "Yes, sir."

* * *

><p>Quinn sipped her third cup of coffee, stubbornly trying not to look like she was enjoying it, but knowing she failing miserably since Peter kept chuckling at her expressions every time she felt her stomach warm up. It had been awhile since she hadn't felt cold. She exhaled slowly and leaned back in her chair, watching the torrents of rain drench the street outside. Finally, Peter hung his polyester apron up in the back of the kitchen and plopped down in the chair across from her.<p>

"So, what now?" Quinn asked.

Peter glanced at his cheap watch. "Well, we've got a few minutes before we have to head for the subway."

Quinn's eyebrows shot up. "You seriously have a Mickey Mouse watch? That has to be one of the tackiest things I've ever seen. And that's saying something coming from Ohio."

Peter grinned. "Ohio, huh?" Her mildly amused expression disappeared. He shrugged. "Hey, look, if it makes you uncomfortable, I'll pretend I don't know. So, Tina, where are you from?"

She rolled her eyes. "You keep raising the tackiness bar every time you open your mouth. Anyways, I haven't even decided whether or not I'm going to help you."

"Why, do you know someone else who's willing to put you up?"

"…No," she huffed. "But it's none of your business. You're really starting to get on my nerves."

Peter watched her for a second, then asked, "Tina… how long has it been since you ran away?"

"What makes you think I ran away?"

"Honestly? Everything. Your clothes, your attitude, the way you talk. You're trying really hard to be independent."

"Okay, Sherlock, I've heard enough."

"So? How long has it been?"

She sighed, running a hand over her tangled hair. "Look… if I'm going to help you, you need to understand something. I have a very hard time trusting people, and for really good reasons. I didn't even get close with anyone before I ran away. So, if I get on that subway train with you, no questions. None. Ever. Got it?"

"Okay, deal. No questions."

"Good." Quinn took a deep breath, downing the last of her coffee. "So, which bank is your brother planning on stealing from?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Sorry there was a bit of a delay. Real life is getting in the way. Please leave a review!**


	7. Violent Bursts

_Lovely Lady_

Mendez had been expecting a long night of watching _The L Word_ and drinking white wine while reviewing her other case files, but when only half her glass of Chardonnay was gone, her intercom buzzed, and she was forced to set her work aside, mute the TV, and press the button. "Who is it?"

"_Uh, Detective Mendez?_"

Mendez sighed, recognizing the slight stammer in the man's voice. "Kyle, what the hell do you want? It's almost midnight."

"_Look, can I come up? It's about our mystery case._"

"Don't know if you heard, kiddo, but that case has been forfeited to the feds."

"_I know, Chief Morgan told me when he fired me._"

Mendez swore under her breath, cursing Kyle's subtle use of the guilt-trip. "Fine," she said into the speaker. "But if you start rambling about X-men or the Hulk, I'm pushing you off the balcony."

"_Duly noted._"

Mendez shut off the intercom and opened the door a few inches, then retrieved her wine glass from the coffee table. A few moments later, there were shuffling footsteps in the hallway and then a hesitant knock on the doorframe.

"I left it open for a reason, kiddo," she observed as she breezed past him towards the kitchen, setting her glass on the counter.

Kyle stepped inside and closed the door behind him. It was a little odd to see him in just plain t-shirt, jeans, and a denim jacket rather than his work clothes. "My mom actually taught me to be polite."

Mendez sighed. "Sorry. It's been a long day."

Kyle shrugged. "I wasn't making a stab at you, I was just saying that I feel weird walking into someone else's house without knocking. Being rude is just kinda your thing. It suits you; I wasn't gonna comment on it. Although, you would make a really great comic book character." She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, making Kyle immediately take a step back. "Don't-throw-me-off-the-balcony-please," he said quickly.

"I don't _have_ a balcony. But I do have a window, and you're skinny enough to fit through it. So, now that you're here, what did you want to talk about?"

"Uh, right," Kyle said, suddenly remembering that he was there for a purpose. He shrugged off his messenger bag and set it on the counter opposite from her, pulling out a thick-ish manila folder. "Okay, so this is everything we know about the case."

"I know, I put that file together, remember?"

"Yeah, but—"

Mendez's brows suddenly snapped together. "Wait a minute, you were fired. How the hell did you get that?"

"I…made copies."

"That's illegal."

"I made them while I was still working for you! I wanted to be able to keep studying them at home."

"Even so, you should have turned in the copies when your employment was terminated."

He squinted at her. "Do you always have to talk in detective vocabulary?"

"Affirmative."

"Are you going to report me?"

"That depends on whether or not I shove you out the window first."

"You know, the more often you threaten me, the less threatening you seem. I'm still taller than you."

"Not by enough, you're not."

"Okay, violence aside for now?" he suggested, holding up the folder.

She took a gulp of her wine, trying not to threaten him again. "What, you find another lead?"

"Yep."

Mendez paused. "What kind of a lead?"

"Possible contact."

"With who?"

"Whom."

"Kyle—"

"A guy from the subway station."

"How'd you find him?"

Kyle pulled out a few printed photographs stapled together, all of them screenshots from the security footage of the subway platform. He handed them to Mendez, tapping the shape of a young man off to the left of the camera. "Him. If you watch the video and the footage from the platform, this guy follows the Fabray girl onto the platform, and then gets on the train with her."

Mendez frowned at the figure, who was wearing a baggy grey hoodie and had a backpack slung over one shoulder. "Do we know where they got off?"

Kyle shook his head. "Unless you want to sift through collective hours of footage from at least fifty different stations, no."

"Did either of the cameras get a shot of his face?"

"No, that's the hard part."

"Kyle, this isn't a lead we can follow up on, and even if we could, it would be against the Chief's orders. I'm not losing my job over this."

"It's really only against the Chief's orders if you use some of your paid hours for it. He can't tell you what to do with your free time."

Mendez's eyebrows disappeared beneath her bangs. "Wow, Kyle, I didn't know you had balls."

"I was inspired by X-men."

"Window's open."

* * *

><p>It was nearing one in the morning when Peter's key jiggled in the lock and he stood aside to let her into the apartment first. She hesitantly stepped over the threshold, glancing around the apartment, and jumped when Elliot's voice erupted from the kitchen.<p>

"Peter, what the _hell_ are you doing bringing this crazy bitch back here?" he demanded, standing up from the tiny card table where he'd been drinking coffee. "And you!" he jabbed a finger at Quinn, "I'm calling the cops."

Immediately, Quinn turned on her heel and attempted to slip back out the door, but Peter's hand snaked around her upper arm and yanked her back. She gave him a shove. "Get off me!"

"No, listen, I brought her here to help!" Peter argued, ignoring Quinn's protests.

"Help?" Elliot echoed. "Help with _what_? She doesn't even want to be here!"

"You're damn right, I don't," Quinn snapped, still trying to wrench her arm out of Peter's grasp.

"You said you would help," Peter told her.

"Yeah, well, _you_ didn't mention anything about _manhandling_ me," she spat back, making him finally let go with one last jerk. "That was bordering on kidnapping, you little twerp. Are you _trying_ to get me to scream bloody murder? Even if I don't kill you, you don't have the money to replace all your glass."

Elliot stared at her, and then at Peter. "What the _hell_ is she talking about?"

* * *

><p>As Elliot and Peter talked (or, rather, argued and repeatedly showed signs of turning violent, in Elliot's case), Quinn remained sitting rigid on the couch, staying as quiet as she could.<p>

"Peter, this is a _colossal_ mistake!" Elliot was yelling. "I can't believe you told a complete and _homeless_ stranger about the job!"

"It's not like she can go to the cops about you – she's on the run!" Peter retorted.

"Yeah, well, that doesn't exactly scream 'trustworthy'."

"Neither does robbing a bank."

"Hey, I am doing what I need to in order to protect this family!" Elliot's voice rose and he jabbed a finger at his younger brother.

"We were getting along just fine until you decided to gamble our savings."

"And I'm _trying_ to make this right," Elliot snapped. "But bringing in some girl that you suddenly took a fancy to isn't going to help! This job has to be done by professionals, not kids."

Quinn pursed her mouth, a little annoyed even though what Elliot was saying was true. She didn't want to stay with them (and she _really_ didn't want to get mixed up in whatever they were caught in), but if she spent many more nights out in the late fall chill, she would die before Christmas and she knew it. She doubted that her voice could keep that from happening.

"Elliot, Tina's special," Peter said. "You need her with you."

"Look, Pete, it's late and I have no idea what you're talking about—"

"She can protect you and the guys during the job. I swear."

Elliot sighed, rubbing his face in exhaustion. "I'm probably going to regret asking, but what do you mean?"

Peter turned around. "Tina? Can you show him?"

Quinn hesitated as Peter set a glass from the cupboard on the kitchen table, but forced herself to stand up and move over to them. Elliot eyed her warily, completely bewildered at this point. "What is this, a magic trick?" he asked dryly.

"Do me a favor," she said. "Plug your ears."

Peter immediately stuck his fingers into his ears, but Elliot glanced at him as if he were trying to figure out how big a padded cell he needed. He shook his head, giving an eye roll before covering his ears as well.

Quinn inhaled slowly, then opened her mouth in a small _O_ and let out a fairly high-pitched single note. Peter and Elliot both winced slightly, reflexively trying to protect their ears further, but Elliot was watching in astonishment as miniscule cracks spread up the glass from the base, and, seconds later, the glass burst into hundreds of tiny shards scattered over the table, chairs, and floor.

Peter took his hands away from his ears, glancing indifferently at the pieces of glass. "Hm. We probably should have put that in a bucket before it exploded."


	8. Ultimatum

_Lovely Lady_

"Okay," Elliot said, shoving his hands into his pockets as he surveyed the glass shards scattered over the kitchen. "What are you? Magician?"

Quinn frowned at him, surprising herself at the fact that she was a little offended by Elliot's disbelief. "That wasn't a trick," she said tightly.

"Then how'd you do it?"

She pressed her lips together, crossing her arms and looking down. "I have no idea."

Elliot's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. "No idea? Wow, that _is_ promising. Peter, where the hell did you find this nutjob?"

"_Nutjob?_" Quinn screeched, nearly fed up.

As a few of the glass shards danced across the floor away from Quinn's feet, Peter yelped and Elliot hissed and recoiled, his nose suddenly releasing a small trickle of blood down his face. Quinn immediately shut her mouth and looked back to Peter, who was sporting the same bloody upper lip.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry—"

But rather than looking angry or confused like Elliot, Peter looked smug. "Still think it's a trick?" he said directly to his brother.

Elliot wiped the blood away from his nose, glancing at Quinn with wide eyes. "Do I really want to know what you can do?"

She swallowed. "All you need to know is that I can protect you. As long as you and whoever else is coming with you on the job are wearing earplugs and stay a good distance away from me, then you won't have to worry about being caught at the bank. Once you leave, though, you're on your own."

"What do you want?"

"A fair share."

"How do I know that I can trust you?"

"You don't. But if I go to the police, then I get stuck in jail with you, and vice versa."

Elliot crossed his arms, sizing her up. "Do you really expect me to believe that a girl just out of high school has the balls to rob a bank?" He smirked.

Quinn narrowed her eyes. "The bank you're planning on stealing from is the Wells Fargo branch on Lexington Avenue, which just happens to be part of the twenty-third largest company in America. A bank with that amount of shareholders is going to have some pretty tight security. You need one that's small enough to have holes in their security but big enough to carry large amounts of cash at all times."

She smirked right back at him. Having a banker for a father certainly had its advantages.

Elliot chuckled dryly. "Really? Okay, Bernie Madoff, which bank do you suggest?"

"T.D." Quinn said simply. "There's a branch on the corner of West 26th Street and 7th Avenue."

"And you know that off the top of your head?"

Quinn shrugged. "I camped out on the other side of the street for a couple nights. There's a Mexican restaurant there that ends up with plenty of leftovers."

"Well, why this branch? There's gotta be at least twenty T.D. branches in New York. Isn't there one in a less populated area?"

She shook her head. "No, you don't want less populated – you want crowded. The more crowded it is, the harder it'll be for the police to get there, and the easier it'll be for you to disappear. This branch is on one-way streets and in a school zone. If you hit it at the right time, when the buses are going in and out with the kids, it'll be easy to make your getaway."

Elliot gave her a strange look (well, strang_er_). "Are you sure you haven't robbed a bank before?"

* * *

><p>After going to bed, Quinn fell into a deep, much-needed sleep and didn't wake up again until the middle of the next afternoon. When she did, the first thing she heard was a hushed conversation between Peter and Elliot in the kitchen behind her. She remained where she was, listening to their whispered debate.<p>

"—can't you give her a chance?" Peter was saying.

"Because I don't know this girl, okay? She makes me uncomfortable, and I don't like having her sleep on our couch."

"Is this because she's homeless or because she knows about what you're trying to pull?"

"That, and a hundred other things," Elliot hissed. "She's on the run from the police, she seems to know a lot more about banks than a normal girl, she can do something really fucking freaky that I have no idea how to explain, and on top of all that, you have basically _shoved _her into the apartment."

Everything Elliot was saying was true, but Quinn was shocked to notice that she felt more worried about being back on the streets than she was about getting mixed up in a bank robbery. She stayed quiet, waiting to hear Peter's response.

"You're right," admitted Peter after a few moments of silence. "But do you really think that crossing that line is what's going to get you out of trouble with Ravanovich?"

"Yes. I know it'll only get me in trouble with the police, but at least that Russian bastard won't be coming after us any more."

"No, the _police_ will."

"The police are predictable. They have rules they have to follow. Ravanovich and his goons would cut off my fingers without a second thought, and we don't have the insurance for that."

"Well, if you want to get away from the Russian mob _and_ the NYPD, then you're gonna have to take Tina with you. I don't want to see you rot away in jail. I know what they do to guys like you. Armed robbery is five years at least, and that's for a convenience store. How long do you think you'll last if you get sent to prison over this?"

Elliot avoided the question with one of his own. "Why is it so important to you that Tina comes with us?"

"Because the guys you're working with are morons. They're bound to make a mistake, and that mistake is liable to get you killed unless you've got a safety net—"

"I wouldn't call her _that_," Elliot snorted.

"—and to me, it really doesn't matter whether you're shot by the police or butchered by Ravanovich. If I had my way, you'd be paying off the mob in a way that _didn't_ risk your life—"

"There _is _no way to pay without risking my life," Elliot interrupted again.

"—but I know I can't talk you out of it, and you won't let me come with you, so you're at least going to listen to me on this one point."

Quinn could almost hear Elliot glaring at his younger brother. "You realize that you're asking me to use this girl's freaky voodoo power to commit a federal crime."

"Of course I do."

"There's a reason people are scared of things they don't understand, Pete," Elliot said lowly. "Whoever she is – whatever she can do – she's dangerous. I don't want anything to do with her, and I want her out of the apartment."

"You are not Dad," Peter snapped. "This is not a situation where you can boss me around like a kid."

"You _are _a kid, Pete."

"I'm nineteen, and you're twenty-two. Don't talk down to me."

Elliot's voice rose slightly. "Hey, who was the one who took care of you whenever Dad beat you almost to death? That was me, remember? Or maybe you were just too whacked out from the cigarette burns to notice."

Quinn forgot she was eavesdropping as Elliot dropped that piece of their family history, and she let out a small gasp. Their conversation died, and she could feel their eyes on her back. She relaxed her body and evened her breathing, hoping they would be fooled.

"She's not awake is she?" Elliot asked.

Peter paused. "No, I don't think so. It's been awhile since she's had a bed; I wouldn't be surprised if she kept sleeping until this time tomorrow."

Elliot sighed. "Okay, look, Pete. You're my little brother. I'm gonna do whatever it is that I can to protect you. Paying off Ravanovich is part of that, but bringing this Tina chick along for the ride is going to put everyone in danger, whether or not she intends it. Having her here is putting _us_ in danger."

Quinn could hear Peter let out a long breath. "You're right," he said. "But we've survived for as long as we have by working together. We're a team, and you're not letting me do my part here. If I tell Tina to leave, then I'm coming with you on the job. If you don't want me there, you take Tina instead and I'll keep my mouth shut."

"You're giving me an ultimatum?"

"Yes."

There was a long, drawn-out silence. "…Okay. I'll think about it. But I won't promise anything," Elliot said finally. "I have to go to work. I'll see you later."

* * *

><p>Quinn waited for another fifteen minutes after Elliot had walked out the door before pulling herself out of bed. Peter looked up with a grin from where he sat at the aluminum card table they used for mealtimes. "Anything interesting?" Quinn asked, nodding to the newspaper he was bending over.<p>

"Nah," he said. "I just like the funnies page." He sat back, folding the paper up and holding it out to her. "You want it?"

Quinn smiled, accepting it and opening it up again to the headlines. "Feels like ages since I read anything other than street signs."

Peter stood to make a fresh pot of coffee as Quinn skimmed through the articles until she came across the crime report page and a small photograph caught her eye. Her heart leapt into her throat as she recognized her own yearbook picture from junior year, next to a small blurb about an FBI investigation surrounding a possible serial murder case. Swallowing, Quinn glanced at Peter, who was whistling as he stirred cream into his coffee. She quickly tore out the offending newspaper page, folding it a couple times under the table and stuffing it into her pocket as quietly as she could.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Please review :)**


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